In case you haven’t heard the stunning news: Yesterday (Tuesday) night, February 22, a day that will live in intellectual infamy, the Caltech basketball team broke its unprecedented losing streak—an improbable and altogether admirable 310 games in a row—defeating Occidental College 46-45. I am not a Caltech alum, nor a basketball fan (although I have a cousin who is the former—which must count for something).
I’ve long admired Caltech for its academic and research excellence, although I’ve never understood why that otherwise fine institution bothered at all with a varsity basketball team. But then again, I’ve never understood why any college or university does so, and indeed, I’ve never even come close to understanding why so many people—including seemingly intelligent individuals in the world of higher education—concern themselves with spectator sports at all. Doing it is different; similarly with attending such events when someone you personally know is playing, but otherwise, I can think of few greater absurdities than the “nationalism writ small” that consumes so many of my fellow citizens, not to mention so many of their dollars.
The issue cuts even more deeply in an economic climate in which so many football coaches in particular receive salaries that exceed that of the entire departments now being eliminated for supposed financial reasons.
So I extend my condolences to Caltech as a whole, to the players, alumnae, and even any devoted fans so deluded that they actually rooted (what a bizarre word and even stranger activity!) for victory, and close by expressing my sincere hope that despite Tuesday’s unfortunate setback, that fine institution resumes its winning ways and continues to chalk up more Nobel Prizes than silly, sweat-stained “successes.”
